This invention relates to maintaining a customer database in a computer telephony integrated (CTI) database. In particular it relates to populating and maintaining a customer database in a computer telephony system with shared and unique telephone numbers.
A call center can be defined as a system that handles inbound (incoming) and/or outbound (outgoing) telephone calls to/from a company""s customers in support of its day-to-day operation. For instance a telemarketing area, where the employees make outgoing calls to try and sell the company""s products or a service area that receives incoming calls from its customers for repair or maintenance of the company""s goods or services. A call center will have a telephone system which may be as simple as a small single-line phone, increasing in complexity up to a large multi-node PBX. Typically a call center comprises a group of telephone operators having personal computers in a network connected to the customer database.
It is becoming increasingly common practice for companies to integrate their customer databases with their telephone call center operation to improve operational efficiency. For example, a customer may dial into the call center to make some payments or changes to an account held in a customer database. The operator answering the telephone call needs to identify the customer and his request, find the account in the database and make the appropriate entries. This takes time if conducted manually; however, the process of identifying a customer and locating an account is an automated task for computer and telephony integrated systems (CTI). The telephone system provides call line information (CLI) accompanying the call and this identifies the customer""s telephone number. This number is also called automated number identification (ANI). The computer system receives the ANI information from the telephony network and searches amongst its records in the database for a matching account. If such an account is found, then it is selected and displayed for the operator.
Typically, when a company introduces a CTI solution into their call center, the telephone information is not considered valuable or significant prior to the introduction of the CTI solution. This lack of accurate information means that the benefits of CTI will not be realized until accurate telephone number information about the call center""s customers has been acquired. Acquiring the information is not a trivial exercise; a mailing campaign would probably have poor response, as customers typically react negatively to being asked for personal information.
Accordingly, one aspect of the invention provides a method of processing records in a telephony database comprising:
receiving an ANI number from an incoming call;
identifying records, if any, in the database with telephone numbers that match said ANI number;
creating a new record if no record from the identified records corresponds to the incoming telephone call, said new record including a telephone number field containing said ANI number; and
associating the telephone number in the new record with a shared status if one or more records have been identified in the database.
In this way, the telephone number in the record associated with (corresponding to) the incoming call is automatically assigned a shared status if another record exists in the database having the same telephone number. This occurs most usually in the case of customers having the same place of work and where the ANI is the same. It is the agent who determines if a record corresponds to a caller by selecting or not selecting one of the records.
In practice, the ANI data is not always unique to one record and multiple records can be located. When dealing with the general public rather than with companies, a call center that uses a CTI application will need to associate more than one telephone number with each customer. These numbers are typically the home, mobile or work numbers. The home number is the private telephone of the customer, usually, associated with their place of residence. The mobile number is also a private number. The work number is the number of their place of work and, as such, may be used by other customers who also work at that location.
When an inbound call is received by the call center, the CTI application will present the agent with options on how to handle the call. These options depend on whether the ANI information associated with the call corresponds to either the work or home number stored in the database. The CTI application can immediately display a customer""s account information if the ANI is the home number. In the case of the work number, the caller could be any one of the customers who have access to this telephone. The application program must first display a list of all the customers who have this number in their records. The agent should then greet the customer, identify them, and then select the caller from the list, so displaying the particular account details.
A frequent occurrence and problem in a call center is that of the abandoned call. The CTI application will place different significance on home and work numbers. Abandoned calls can only be returned successfully if there is a high probability of contacting their customer directly. This cannot be achieved by returning a call to a work number which more often than not will be the firm""s switchboard. Abandoned calls fire more likely to be reconnected when made to a customer calling from their home phone number and more likely their mobile number. However, it may also be that a home phone number is not strictly unique in the sense that a home is shared by a family or another group of people. In this case it may be advantageous to have 3 categories: unique (mobile phone or unique home phone number); seem shared (shared home phone number); and shared (work number or similar). This may be achieved by using a non-binary status field associated with the telephone number.
Several scenarios can occur after a search of the database:
a) It may be that no matching records are selected in the database. In this case a new record is created in the database with the ANI number in a telephone number field. Since no other records are found, then the ANI number may be unique.
b) It may be that one matching record is located and this is the corresponding record. In this case a new record is created in the database with the ANI number in the telephone number field.
c) Since there are two records having the ANI number in their telephone phone fields, these numbers are not unique and are deemed shared numbers. This last scenario also occurs if more than one matching record is found but none of them is the corresponding record.
The record that corresponds to the incoming call is not necessarily any of those that have been selected from the database using the ANI number. For instance, if an existing customer is calling from a number not usually associated with him, other records may be located in the ANI search which do not correspond with the incoming call. The operator determines the name of the caller through conversation and picks a record from the database which was not initially matched. The record picked by the operator is the corresponding record to the call.
Preferably, the method also involves checking the shared status of each corresponding telephone number in the existing records. This will occur in the case where only one customer is using a work number to connect to the call center and when a second customer connects to the call center using this work number. It may also occur when the database has not been maintained to keep track of all the existing shared numbers. In the former case the database search and selection of the corresponding record will reveal that the ANI number is not unique and will indicate that the number is a shared number. Both the entry in the second customer""s account and the entry in the first customer""s account are set as shared telephone numbers.
The method may associate the telephone number field with a unique status if no matching record is selected. This will allow the telephone number to be uniquely identified as non-shared so that call-back resources may be optimized.
During the course of an operator/caller interaction, it may be ascertained whether the ANI number acquired is in fact a unique or shared number rather than assumed from existing database data. Advantageously, the method further provides associating the telephone number field with a verified or unverified status whereby the shared or unique status has been confirmed or not. Further assumptions can be made and benefits derived if the actual status of the telephone number is known rather than assumed.
A further advantage is provided by associating the telephone number with a primary or secondary status depending whether the value in the telephone number field is respectively the main phone number or another less used number. Call-back resources are optimized for unique numbers. However, if the unique number is a secondary unique number then the probability of achieving a successful call-back is diminished and a schedule could use this information to prioritize calls.
When a search on an incoming call identifies a record not being associated with the call but having a matching telephone number which is verified unique status, a new record is created and the new telephone number is associated with a secondary unique status.
The telephone field may be associated with a usage count for indicating the number of times the record has been located by the value in the telephone number field. This allows entries in the database to be placed in priority sequence as the search is taking place. For example, as results are presented to the agent as they are located, the mostly commonly accessed records are chosen first. This saves on agent, customer and processing time if a record can be selected before the full search of the database has been carried out. It also provides the information that allows a decision to be made as to which telephone number to discard when the number of telephone numbers in the database has become limiting.
The telephone field may be associated with a date for indicating the date when the record was last selected giving advantages as mentioned above.